Sony considering selling mobile and TV businesses

Sony is said to be willing to sell its under-performing mobile and TV businesses in a bid to return to profitability.

The Japanese giant is in a curious position. It’s performing very well indeed in a couple of key areas – specifically gaming and camera technology – but is falling well short of the mark in others.

According to Reuters, this has led to the idea that Sony may be willing to let its mobile and TV brands go to the highest bidder.

Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai is reportedly open to the idea after failing to turn around the company’s wider fortunes since taking over in April 2012, and with forecasts of a 230 billion yen (£1.3 billion) loss for the current business year.

It’s a tactic that Hirai has shown himself willing to deploy in the recent past. Last year, Sony sold its loss-making Vaio PC business. Now the Xperia and Bravia brands could be set to follow.

At the recent CES show in Las Vegas, where Sony unveiled a range of slinky new TVs and the surprisingly high-end return of the Walkman brand, Hirai admitted that his reforms to date had only been partially successful.

“Electronics in general, along with entertainment and finance, will continue to be an important business,” he said of the company’s future. “But within that there are some operations that will need to be run with caution – and that might be TV or mobile, for example.”

It will be interesting to see if Sony turns out to be the company to run those mobile and TV businesses through 2015, cautiously or otherwise.